


exodus: the dissonant verses

by foundCarcosa



Category: Christian Bible (Old Testament)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-11 00:23:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7014781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A retelling of sorts, of two men who were more than men, and the will that wrought and warped their world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	exodus: the dissonant verses

**i.**  
Before Mary, there was Yocheved.  
Amram saw the spidery mark first, shades lighter than her dusky skin, branching from one round shoulder down over a back curved by decades of labour.

“I was struck by lightning,” she says offhandedly, “earlier, in the fields.”

Amram, himself thunderstruck in a different fashion, doesn’t remind her that there had been no rain, no storm, verily, no _clouds,_ all day.

Yocheved was seven months pregnant.

 **ii.**  
Aaron wouldn’t touch his baby brother. Miriam watched him warily, scanning his big brown eyes that never blinked, his flawless chestnut flesh, his six-fingered hands, but could find no reason to hate him.

He was a remarkable infant. But deep in the young girl’s heart, she felt, not love, or pride, but fear.

Yocheved, wild-eyed and trembling, had waking dreams of clawing the eyes from Pharaoh’s soldiers. Amram, fearing the lash – his back was scored just as his wife’s was, although by less divine hands – did not hide the babe from them.

When Pharaoh’s soldiers lifted the child by its legs and looked, they were struck blind.

Before more soldiers could come, Yocheved found a wicker basket, and placed the child in it.

Miriam, watching the current usher the parcel downriver, thought she saw lightning flash in the cloudless distance.

 **iii.**  
No one questioned why Pharaoh’s wife had taken in an Israelite child.  
Not because they feared Pharaoh’s wrath for their insolence. It simply never crossed their mind to question.

Moses grew, dark and solemn, and Pharaoh seemed to grow dim in contrast, and though his true son, the Egyptian godchild, grew strapping and tall beside Moses, he too dimmed in comparison.  
No one questioned this, either.

An Egyptian struck an Israelite, and left a gash like the flash of lightning across roiling desert sky.  
Moses’ hand struck the Egyptian, and he fell like the crash of thunder.

When Pharaoh confronted his adopted son, he felt his eyes sear as if they had been focused on the midday sun, and fear squeezed his heart like the angry hand of Set.

 **iv.**  
In Midian, Jethro sheltered the dark and solemn Egyptian exile, and when his formidable girth withered and he became frail, Moses assumed he had simply begun to age.

The Midianites, watching Moses become broad-shouldered and thick-haired, knew differently.

They were glad to see him go, him and his wife, Tzipporah of the haunted eyes, and the children that rarely opened their mouths to speak, and never opened their mouths to laugh.

 **v.**  
The bush had erupted in a pillar of flame. Struck by lightning, perhaps.  
But it had not been consumed, and Moses, fascinated, touched the flames, and likewise was not consumed – not bodily.

He heard a voice, a divine voice, and he followed its instructions, and no one had been with him to tell him that it was his own thundering voice he’d heard, from his own windburnt lips.

He never spoke again.

 **vi.**  
Moses smiled, _Hello, brother mine,_ and Aaron felt his heart shudder and his balls retract.

Moses tilted his dark head, and touched slender fingers to Aaron’s temple, and Aaron was consumed, and when he again opened his eyes, fire flickered in them.

‘Did you see lightning?’ Israelites murmured to each other as they stacked bricks, but the sky was cloudless, and they cast the thought from their minds.

 **vii.**  
Ramesses, now Pharaoh, rose from his throne as the visitors were brought before him, and felt a wave of heat wash over him and his court.  
He felt no gladness at seeing his adopted brother behind the wiry Israelite. only dread.

'I have come for the children of Israel,’ Aaron intoned.  
He brought forth a shepherd’s staff, and cast it at Pharaoh’s feet, and it became serpentine; and when Pharaoh’s pompous magicians set about doing the same, to make mockery of fool’s magic, only Ramesses saw Aaron’s rod devour all of their snakes, all of them, and turn hungry yellow eyes onto Pharaoh.

 _Likewise, I will devour all of Egypt,_ it spoke, and Ramesses drove Aaron and the silent, fire-eyed Moses from his sight, his hands trembling.

 **viii.**  
 _I am the morning and evening star,_ Ramesses thought as the Nile ran red with conjured blood, as his manservants bundled him out and away from it, as he cast his eyes behind him to see Moses and Aaron on the far shore, fire-eyed and solemn.

 _I am the morning and evening star,_ Ramesses thought as his hand listed up towards his chest, where his heart rested like a lump of cold cement, like an extinguished sun, like a lightless moon.

 _I am the morning and evening star,_ Ramesses thought as his land stank of vermin and Goshen lay as yet untouched, as his son shrank from his increasingly chilly and stone-like flesh, as the magicians sickened and died from the dangers of trying to keep up.

_I am the morning and evening star, but Moses is that which birthed the stars, and he is taking back his light._

**ix.**  
Ramesses awoke in the night and his son was as chilly and stone-like as the dead heart in his chest.

All of Egypt wailed, rent their clothing, gnashed their teeth.  
Ramesses, dry-eyed and wroth, met Moses, he of the blazing eyes and thunderous voice, in the place where decaying Egypt met thriving Goshen.  
Aaron was no longer with him, for there were no more words of warning left to speak.

'Take them,’ Ramesses snarled, and stars shivered at the sound of his voice. ’ _Your people._ Take them, and let this be ended. May they suffer under your rule. May they know nothing but uncertainty and strife. May they cry out to you, their _saviour_ and be broken and bereft at your silence.’

Moses smiled, and the moon hid.

'May Ammit devour your self-serving heart!’ Ramesses hissed, but his ribcage tightened like a vise, and his limbs became like ribbons, and the morning and evening star fell, and all Egypt with him.

 **x.**  
The last of Egypt gave chase, pouring out after the Israelites and their godhead, but Moses was all flame now, a pillar rising heavenward to be a fiery wall between his people and Pharaoh’s, and when his people quailed at the breadth of the sea before them, he laughed at their paltry faith and feeble minds, and extravagantly parted the sea in twain.

Aaron the prophet had sickened, too frail to hold divine fire for long, and died on the far shores.

And Canaan was a desert, a wasteland, with nothing to break the view but the craggy mountains, and the newly-freed Israelites became like Egyptians, and turned from their silent deliverer.

and Moses again heard Ramesses’ last words, and clutched at his heart, but it too was silent; for it had already been devoured.

In the valley, his people used his fire to forge a new god.


End file.
